


The Shitty Little Match Mage

by TwoBrokenMirrors



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Blood Magic, Don't lie in the snow Anders, Emotional Manipulation, Emotions, F/M, He is purple though, Illness, Kidfic, No I'm not writing about default!Hawke, Not presented as irretrievably evil though, Purple Hawke, Spoilers for early DA:I, You get my own Roger Hawke and you like it, postgame, qunari inquisitor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2018-12-13 16:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11763759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoBrokenMirrors/pseuds/TwoBrokenMirrors
Summary: Two and a half years after the events of Dragon Age II, Hawke and Merrill have set up a life for themselves in the mountains away from the growing disaster of the Mage/Templar war. They're hoping to keep it, even after they find someone they thought they'd never see again.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> SO basically I wanted to describe what happened to my Hawke and my favourite companions after the game ended.  
> I don't know if I'll ever finish this, so CONSIDER YOURSELVES WARNED, but hopefully I'll be able to add at least another chapter or so. Elements from Inquisition will work their way in as it continues, tag list etc will get updated as required.

The snow lay in a glittering carpet across the rocky ground, smoothing out edges and reflecting brightness into a pair of bright amber eyes. Roger Hawke, erstwhile Champion of Kirkwall, expert mage and inspiration to rebel magic-users everywhere, squinted painfully, wished he’d remembered his smoked glasses, and called,  
“Elgara! Remember not to go too far!”  
The waddling bundle of furs and leather, barely recognisable as a young child, giggled and made a gallant attempt to do the direct opposite, managing a creditable increase in speed for a moment or two before sheer weight of padding brought her face-down into a snowdrift. Roger grumbled and trudged towards her, leaning down to drag her upright by the scruff; his daughter wiggled in his grip, scrubbing snow from her eyes with her mittened hands, and as soon as he let her go charged off again.  
“Papa! Papa be fast! Find Mamae!”  
“Mamae will find us faster if we don’t get lost in the snow, Elgara- don’t run, you’ll just- there, you fell over again. Len’alas!”  
Hoisted out by the back of her furs once again, Elgara let out a loud raspberry at the epithet.  
“Papa’s len’alas! Papa’s a dirty child!”  
“Hole in your logic there, emm’asha,” Roger observed, propping her on his hip. “Papa isn’t a child, is he?”  
Elgara, unfazed by this correction possibly because she’d only really understood a quarter of it, clutched at Roger’s coat and slyly added,  
“ _Revas_ len’alas.”  
As if on cue there was a quiet, sleepy murmur from the swaddled bundle on Roger’s back. Roger laughed.  
“If Revas is a dirty child it doesn’t seem to be bothering him. Look, Elgara, there’s the stone where we meet Mamae!”  
Elgara crowed with delight as her father set her down on top of it and immediately craned as far onto her tiptoes as she could manage, peering down the barely visible road in search of her mother. Merrill had been away for a good three weeks, buying supplies and continuing her quiet studies in Markham to the north; she’d left before the blizzard came down, and there was a growing, gnawing concern in Roger’s guts about that.  
“See her, emm’asha?”  
What little was visible of Elgara’s face under her hood assumed a pouty aspect as she shook her head.  
“Aw, I guess we’ll have to wait a bit. Want to play I-Spy?”  
I-Spy was Elgara’s favourite game, played as it was in both Common and Elvish, and usually she jumped at the chance; this time she gave him a sideways glance that said plainly that she saw right through him, and agreed with some reluctance. It didn’t take her long to lose interest either, whining impatiently when still no familiar shape appeared trekking up towards them. Even baby Revas, picking up on the growing anxiety from his father, began to squirm and whimper in his sling.  
Merrill really should have been back by now.  
Slowly, Roger moved a hand towards the neck of his coat, pulling off his glove and ignoring the immediate bite of cold as he reached into his clothing, groping for the delicate bundle of willow and crystal and blood that hung round his neck. There was only maybe one more use in it, the blood-magic-bound facsimile of a distance-speaking spell not nearly as reliable as a properly built one, but if there was any time to use it this was it.  
Just as he touched it, however, it warmed beneath his fingers, a quiet but insistent buzzing rattling against his chest. Startled, his index finger bumped against the sharp edge of crystal kept there for that very purpose without his conscious thought and, wakened by the right person’s blood, Merrill’s voice filled his head.  
 _Ma vhenan,_ she said, tone saturated with relief. _I am so sorry for being late._  
 _Are you all right?_ Roger sent back at once, just as relieved. _What held you up? Elgara’s on the verge of riding off to be your gallant knight, here._  
 _I’m all right,_ her disembodied voice assured him, and some of the tension that had held his shoulders rigid dissolved just like that. Merrill was a terrible liar when it came to things like this; if she wasn’t, he’d know.  
 _So what’s the holdup? Found some bandits who needed a short, sharp lesson in respect? Been swayed by some beautiful pirate captain and only checking in to say goodbye?  
Ma vhenan,_ she said, trying for reproach, but he could hear the giggle in the words. She still sounded tired, though, and there was an underlying anxiety that made him frown. _I would never._  
 _I know. So what_ is _the matter?  
I found someone. In the snow. I’m bringing him back with me._  
A tickle of alarm went down Roger’s spine. It was not all that uncommon for them to give some aid to travellers, being about the only friendly place on this particular pass, but something about the way she spoke…  
 _Anyone I should know?_ He asked, playful still. There was a pause. He didn’t much like that pause.  
 _Roger,_ Merrill said eventually, the anxiety now plain. _Roger, it’s Anders._  
Well, this silence was definitely worse than the previous pause.  
 _Bring him home, then, I suppose,_ he said, and broke the contact. The talisman under his hand shattered; he ignored it, his eyes fixed on the still-empty road ahead.  
Anders. Maker damn it all, why _Anders?_  
“Papa? Papa, talking to Mamae?”  
Roger blinked, and looked down at Elgara.  
“Ah! Yes. Mamae is only late because we’re- going to have a visitor, emm’asha. He might be hurt, though, so you’ll have to be very good and quiet.”  
The idea that he was hurt was a guess, but from Merrill’s tone and the sheer fact that it was Anders, not an outside one. Elgara frowned.  
“Nice visitor?”  
“I _hope_ so!” Roger said, trying to make it sound more like a joke than the sincere wish it actually was. “He’s an old- friend of Papa and Mamae. We haven’t seen him in a _long_ time. Since before you were born! His name is Anders.”  
His daughter’s face was serious as she absorbed this, then she reached to be picked up again.  
“Anders like milk from Emma-goat?”  
“You know, I never asked him,” Roger said, settling her on his hip once more. At least Revas had quieted down again. “I suppose we’ll find out, though.”


	2. Chapter Two

It didn’t take much longer for Merrill to appear on the road, supporting a figure that, though hunched, was still half a head taller than her slim frame. Roger wasted no time going to her aid, wrapping an arm around a body evidently unable to stay upright without help, and between them (and with Elgara’s thoughtful toddler commentary) they manhandled him back up to the small cluster of buildings they’d made their home. Once inside, they laid him on their bed and, pausing only to carefully unbundle Revas and pass him to his mother, Roger went at once to light the fire and boil water. Elgara prised herself out of her outdoor clothes to the best of her ability and went to peer over Merrill’s knee at their guest, eyes narrowed.  
“Len’alas,” she pronounced, finally.  
“That’s not very nice, da’vhenan,” Merrill chided, distracted by the dual necessities of feeding her son and making sure the man in her bed was not actively dying. “Even if he is rather dirty.”  
“Needs bath,” Elgara agreed. There was a tinge of jealousy in her tone; she was rarely permitted to get quite as coated in grime as Anders was. “Is he sleep?”  
“He’s asleep,” Merrill said, hoping it was true. He’d seemed fairly lucid when she’d found him- lucid enough to recognise her, anyway- but he’d become less and less so as they walked, and as soon as they’d put him down he’d gone limp, eyes closing. “He’s very ill, da’vhenan, so you’re not to poke him or ask him questions until he’s better.”  
“Papa said.” Elgara nodded, a little morose. Merrill spared a hand to ruffle her hair, gently tweaking the tip of one pointed ear- blunter than a true elf’s, but still much larger than a human’s. Elgara giggled, then settled herself down on the floor against her mother’s leg, peering up curiously as Merrill returned to trying her best to get Anders out of his clothes.  
It was quite a task. From the state of them he’d evidently been living in them for some time, and Merrill wasn’t at all sure that they weren’t the exact same garments he’d been wearing the last time she’d seen him more than two years ago. Certainly the feathery pauldrons were the same, but then he’d always been fond of those.  
As she peeled back the layers, wrinkling her nose at the smell of stale, unwashed male that wafted up, Roger came padding back in, carrying a bowl of steaming water and cloths. Setting them down, he claimed the now-asleep Revas from her and settled him in his crib, then returned to look down at Anders.  
He was silent for a long moment. Merrill looked up at him from her seat, wondering what he was thinking. She knew he’d been fond of the other man, how much it had hurt him to see his decline, and could quite well guess at the guilt after Anders had taken himself off, that he hadn’t insisted harder that he stay. She reached out and touched Roger’s hand, gently twining their fingers.  
“Roger?”  
Roger blinked, looked down at her, and crooked a smile.  
“Good thing I brought all the spare cloths,” he proclaimed. “The man’s _filthy._ ”  
Merrill snorted, hardly surprised, and squeezed his hand. The grip he returned was almost tight enough to hurt. She let the joke stand unchallenged.  
“It’s funny, your daughter said much the same thing,” she observed, finally letting him go and reaching for a cloth. Roger looked down and winked at Elgara, then leaned over for a cloth of his own.  
“Great minds _do_ think alike,” he said, kneeling on the floor next to Merrill’s chair and carefully reaching to dab at Anders’ forehead.  
Despite herself Merrill was rather relieved when the touch of the warm, damp cloth made Anders’ face twitch, lips parting slightly. He’d been lying so very still half of her had been convinced he’d passed away without her noticing at all. She joined the washing, smoothing grime from his cheeks; he’d developed quite the beard, enough that it had taken him saying her name for her to fully realise who he was. It didn’t suit him, she thought critically. It made him look old, neglected, somehow even more so than the stubble he’d always worn before. Perhaps it would look better if it was washed and combed, and not a tangled ginger mass. She hooked a finger into the nearest snarl and tried to tease it out as gently as she could; it seemed to be coming loose, but halfway through it caught and pulled, and she half-squeaked as his eyes flicked open.  
Beside her, Roger froze. Anders stared at the ceiling for a long, long moment, then a small frown creased his forehead.  
“Where _am_ I?”  
His voice sounded like it hadn’t been used in months. Merrill glanced across at Roger, who didn’t seem inclined to say anything, and cleared her throat.  
“You’re in our house, Anders. You’re welcome to stay,” she added, just in case. “You look terrible, and I wouldn’t want to be throwing you out in the snow when you’ve just arrived.”  
“...Merrill?” Anders turned his head slightly, the movement stiff and painful-looking. “...Maker, Merrill, it really _is_ you, I thought I’d-”  
“-Been hallucinating your long-lost best friends in the last moments before you froze to your ultimate demise?” Roger chipped in, cheerfully sarcastic. “I mean, I wouldn’t blame you, but sadly for your delusions of noble death we’re both quite real.”  
Anders half-opened his mouth, then stopped.  
“...Hawke?”  
“Yes, I’m here too, or did you think Merrill had left me for a demon by now?”  
“ _Roger_ ,” Merrill hissed, batting at his arm. “He’s sick! Don’t be cruel when he’s sick, wait until he gets better.”  
Roger huffed and scrubbed at his nose. “Well, fine. Yes, Anders, I’m here, and Merrill’s here, and you’re not nearly pretty or waifish enough to be the little match elf so you’re here too. When was the last time you ate?”  
Anders blinked, slowly, twice. He looked dizzy.  
“I, er-”  
“That’s a ‘not in the last few days’, then,” Roger interrupted, brisk. “I’ll get you a lovely exciting bowl of _broth_ then, and we’ll hope you can keep it together long enough to not bring it all back up again over the bedclothes. You are in _our_ bed, after all.”  
He stood up without further preamble and strode back through to the other room, back very straight. Anders’ gaze followed him as best it could, then settled back on Merrill.  
“Strange,” he rasped, wheezing on the word. “Would have- expected _you_ to be the one to hate me-”  
He started to cough then, painful dry coughs; Merrill, more exasperated than sympathetic, patted his shoulder until he ran out of breath.  
“I don’t hate you and neither does Roger,” she told him firmly, although the excessively loud clattering from the direction of the cooking fire indicated that Roger was definitely feeling something other than entirely positive. “He’s just surprised to see you, that’s all. We both thought you were dead,” she added, in the spirit of honesty, before belatedly realising that probably didn’t say much for their perceptions of his competence.  
“ _I_ thought I was dead.”  
“Well, good thing you’re not!” Merrill said, bright and not entirely convinced she spoke the truth. “Settle down now, you’ll do yourself an injury. Another injury, that is. ...Do you have any injuries? Physical ones. I can’t tell without taking all your clothes off.”  
It was quite heartening to see a faint stain of pink come up on Anders’ cheekbones, stark and pale as they were. He still had enough of himself left to get needlessly embarrassed, at least.  
“Um-”  
“You’ll have to take them off eventually,” she told him, a little merciless. “They’re barely fit for rags!”  
“ _Dirty,_ ” agreed a small, sleepy voice from her feet.  
Anders… froze. Merrill could see the uncertainty and almost _horror_ creep across his expression as he lay rigid, afraid to move as Elgara peeped solemnly up over the edge of the bed.  
“Anders, this is Elgara,” she said, to break the silence. “She’ll be two and a half years old in a week or so.”  
It was easy enough to do the maths on that one, and she watched his eyes dart between the child, herself and the door to the other room, through which could still be heard Roger’s unnecessarily forceful cooking. She shrugged at him, a tiny part of her remembering a sickly-sweet question down in the sewers of Kirkwall, casting doubt on her commitment to the man she already knew she loved with all her heart. His gaze settled on her again, then slid away, and he closed his eyes.  
“...Nice to meet you, Elgara,” he croaked. Elgara gave him a little wave, suddenly hesitant; Merrill ducked down and smoothed her fingers through her daughter’s hair.  
“Do you think you could help Papa make dinner? He sounds like he’s making a mess of it, doesn’t he?”  
Elgara looked over towards the door, back at the newcomer in the bed, then nodded and scurried in the direction of her father. Merrill waited until the door closed behind her, then looked back at Anders.  
“I still don’t hate you,” she said, voice low. “I never hated you, even after all the things you said, you know? But this is my house now, Anders. Me and Roger built it up ourselves, after everything that happened, and _you won’t take it away from us._ ”  
His whole body flinched back from her sudden force, breath catching in his throat and bringing on another coughing fit. Merrill rose without a word and fetched him water from the nearby jug, handing it over and settling herself back down as the hacking subsided.  
“Now, _do_ you have any injuries or would you prefer Roger to look you over? ...You didn’t have to spit your water out like that, now you’re all wet. You really must take those clothes off!


	3. Chapter Three

In the end, Anders was permitted to keep his clothing for at least as long as it took to feed him. It was Roger who took that duty, Merrill heading through to feed Elgara and put her to bed as soon as her husband returned with a bowl of thin soup.  
Flopping down without ceremony in her vacated chair, Roger huffed out a breath and gave Anders a considering stare.  
“How likely is it you’ll spill this everywhere if you try and feed yourself?”  
Anders scowled slightly. Roger smirked, just a little, and passed the bowl over. The liquid inside trembled and slopped from the shaking in Anders’ hands, but didn’t spill.  
“Good start. Now for the tricky bit- getting it on the spoon.”  
“You haven’t changed a bit, you know that, Hawke?”  
“I try. Now, appreciate my cooking.”  
Anders snorted, looking down at the bowl. Roger watched him, internally wincing when he saw how the other man could could barely even fold his fingers around the spoon’s narrow handle, let alone get it to his mouth. He managed two mouthfuls, more than Roger thought he would, before he fumbled awkwardly and the spoon went flying, landing with finality on the blankets.   
They both stared at it for a long moment before Roger reached out and picked it up.  
“Anders,” he began, then stopped. Somehow this didn’t seem like a moment for sarcasm, although that would have been a _lot_ easier to deal with. How did he even _begin?_  
“...Anders,” he tried again, with no more success than before.  
“That’s still my name,” Anders returned, tone halfway between irritation and an odd, bitter amusement. Roger rolled his eyes; if he was going to be like _that_ then it was probably fine to just spit it all out, or at the very least he deserved it.  
“I haven’t seen you in two and a half years, man! And then you come crawling up our mountain looking like you’ve been living in a nug burrow for the last decade without a by-your-leave. What have you been _doing?_ Even Varric didn’t know where you were and Varric knows everything. We thought you were dead. We thought you’d- or the Templars had- or even the Circle mages had- or _Justice_ had- is Justice-”  
“Justice is still here,” Anders confirmed, monotone.  
“-Well frankly now I’m somehow even more surprised you’re not dead even though I had no reason to expect him _not_ to be still around- Maker damn it all, Anders, I thought I’d never see you again. We all thought we’d never see you again. And now I have, and that beard doesn’t suit you _at all.”_  
That startled something approaching a laugh out of Anders, and despite himself Roger felt his heart warm a little. Anders might be… difficult. Somewhat excessively difficult, it would be fair to say. And over-keen on manifestos. But when he felt like it, he could be good company. Roger had missed those moments.  
“The beard… wasn’t deliberate.”  
Roger snorted, because talking about the beard was better than carrying on spewing feelings until he cried. “Plainly.”  
“Neither was the- disappearing act.”  
“That’s just a lie.”  
“No,” Anders said, with surprising force; almost inevitably he started coughing again. Roger, unsure what to do, settled for patting his shoulder until it passed. “No. Please. Believe me. I meant to- the mages needed me. I thought.”  
“...Not too pleased you kind of forced the whole ‘rebellion’ thing, then?” Roger said, and cursed himself internally as Anders’ face closed in on itself.  
“...No.”  
“How long did that take to boil over, then?”  
“A few months.”  
“A few months?” Roger echoed. “But you didn’t mean to disappear…”  
“By then you were _gone_ ,” Anders snapped. “Nobody knew where you were, and I didn’t _dare_ show my face in Kirkwall again. I couldn’t even find Varric, let alone someone like _Fenris_ -”  
“Pretty sure he went to look for Isabela,” Roger said, probably unnecessarily.  
“Yes, well, thank you for confirming he was _definitely_ impossible to find. As were Aveline and Donnic. So I thought-” he stopped, the surge of anger leaving him as quickly as it had arrived, and tucked his chin into his chest, mouth a hard line. Roger rubbed a thumb along the line of his right sideburn, wondering if he dared press more. He suspected he could probably fill in the blanks for himself, anyway.  
The silence sat for long enough that it started to ache in Roger’s head. He twirled the spoon in his fingers, then blinked, having almost forgotten he still held it.  
“...Still hungry?”  
The sigh that Anders gave seemed to have been dragged up from the very depths of his battered, weary soul.  
“If I say yes, you’re going to feed me, aren’t you.”  
“Well, I mean-”  
“Just get it over with, Hawke.”  
“I’ve got lots of practice at this, you know. Weaning Elgara was quite the task.”  
“ _Hawke._ ”  
“Though I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you to open wide for the dragon.”  
“For the love of Andraste’s lacy bloomers, Hawke, will you just-”  
“I didn’t know you knew so much about Andraste’s choice of underwear.”  
“ _ROGER._ ”  
Roger paused in the act of scraping up a spoonful of broth.  
“...It’s been a long time since you called me Roger, Anders.”  
“It seemed like a good way to get you to shut up,” Anders said, avoiding his gaze. Roger smiled.  
“If you say so. Now… open wide for the dragon!”  
The look Anders gave him said quite clearly that the other man would not be at _all_ responsible for any spirits of justice that came out to play should Roger say anything like that again, but he opened his mouth anyway. Roger put the spoon in it, wondering exactly how his life had come to this. Anders had nice lips, he noticed vaguely, even when they were cracked and pale. He probably shouldn’t be thinking that, just like he shouldn’t be thinking that feeding someone took on a whole different dimension when they were a grown adult with nice lips and not your baby daughter.  
He focused instead on not actually humiliating Anders any more than was strictly necessary, and making sure that he got as much of the food down him as he could manage. It didn’t turn out to be much, which was hardly surprising. Roger eyed him with some concern; Anders looked dizzy again, eyes unfocused, a sheen of sweat developing on his forehead. Swapping the bowl for another damp rag, unfortunately cold by now, he dabbed at Anders’ forehead and, fatherly instincts coming to the fore, wiped away a dribble of broth from his chin. Anders laughed weakly.  
“Always… looking after everyone. That’s our Hawke.”  
“I do my best. And my best says you ought to be sleeping. Preferably out of those clothes.”  
“Why does... everyone here... want to take my clothes off... so badly?” Anders asked the ceiling. Roger snorted.  
“Because they’re disgusting. Come on. Just that, then you can sleep for as long as you like.”  
Anders made a low, demurring sound, hunching up a bit more. Roger sighed. He really did look ill.  
 _“...Fine._ But when you wake up itching, don’t blame me.”  
There was a noise that could have been a laugh, but Anders was already curling up and in on himself, eyes closed, breathing settling even though it remained rougher than Roger would like. With another sigh, Roger fetched the spare blanket and laid it over him, scooped up the thankfully still sleeping Revas, then stole out of the room on quiet feet, hoping the rest would do Anders some good.


	4. Chapter Four

In the main room, Elgara was proving that the excitement of sleeping on Mamae and Papa’s pile of spare blankets by the fire was no match for tiredness, and succumbing so quickly that she raised only a quiet whimper as Roger took his place next to Merrill, cradling Revas in his lap.  
“How is he?” Merrill asked softly, stroking Elgara’s hair. Roger shrugged.  
“Exhausted, and sick, and _still Anders,”_ he said. “So Maker only knows what he’s planning to do with himself when he stops being exhausted and sick. He’s still got Justice riding along with him, the fool.”  
“He won’t stop being exhausted and sick for a long time, I think,” Merrill said, shaking her head. “We’ll have to make sure he stays in bed!”  
“Stays in _our_ bed.”  
“We’ll get the children’s beds out tomorrow when we know we won’t disturb him.”  
“That’s not what I pointed out he’s stealing.”  
Merrill looked at him, hazel eyes enormous and innocent.  
“Are you worried about how many times we’ve had sex in it? I don’t think he’ll mind, when he’s so sick.”  
Roger slowly raised a hand and rested it on his wife’s shoulder, looking deep into those eyes with a serious expression.  
“Merrill, you are evil, and I adore you beyond measure. Please never mention to Anders exactly how many times we’ve fucked in that bed, or I believe I may die just from the look on his face.”  
Merrill giggled, and patted the hand on her shoulder reassuringly.  
“Ma vhenan, I will save it for a very special occasion.”  
Roger narrowed his eyes, then leaned forward and dropped a kiss on her lips.  
“Go to sleep.”  
“As my husband wishes,” Merrill agreed demurely, with a smile that was the opposite. Roger threw the hand not supporting Revas in the air in a gesture of futility and lay down himself, arranging the baby between them with an air of superior fussiness. Merrill giggled again, settling down herself at last, and reached out to stroke Roger’s cheek.  
“It’ll be all right, ma vhenan. We’ll all be all right.”  
The words, often repeated in previous years, were comforting. Roger smiled.  
“I know. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

As both Roger and Merrill had at least half expected, come the next morning Anders was in the grip of a true fever, sweating and struggling to breathe. They therefore made the executive decision that it was no longer his choice whether or not he kept his clothes, and perhaps thankfully he was no longer coherent enough to object to this.  
“They smell terrible,” Merrill observed doubtfully, holding a ragged pair of breeches at arm’s length between finger and thumb. “I wonder when they were last washed?”  
“Two and a half years ago if I had to guess,” Roger said. “I’m going to burn his underthings, by the way.”  
Merrill grimaced agreement and dropped the breeches on the pile. “These, too? And his shirt. ...Will he hurt us very much if we burn the pauldrons?”  
“We might as well leave him _something_. I’ll see if they keep enough feathers to be worth it after they’ve had a wash.”  
“He needs a wash, as well.” Merrill paused. “Would you prefer to, ma vhenan? He might be more embarrassed to find out I was the one to bathe him, when he’s better.”  
Roger, distracted by trying to collect up soiled clothing without touching it too much, made a questioning noise and said, without thinking, “No, I’m pretty sure if he found out I’d gone anywhere near his private parts without his knowledge he’d spontaneously combust.”  
Merrill blinked. “Why do you say that?”  
Hawke looked up properly. “...Merrill, I know you noticed that Anders tends to _prefer the company of men._ I’m not sure how you managed to then miss that he would have jumped at the chance to ‘enjoy’ _my_ company.”  
Merrill blinked again, then slowly grinned. “He _liked_ you!”  
“He absolutely did,” Roger confirmed, with a gusty sigh. “It got a little awkward at points, since I always had my sights set on _you_ -”  
“Ah, ma vhenan! You flatterer.” Merrill leaned over and planted a kiss on Roger’s cheek, giggling; Roger slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in for a proper kiss, nuzzling their noses together.  
“...I might have flirted with him a bit anyway,” he confessed, eventually. Merrill rolled her eyes.  
“I would have been a little worried if you had not.”  
“You understand me so well. So I hope you understand why I’m letting _you_ wash the filthy possessed man lying in our bed.”  
Merril was about to reply when from the other room there came a thin, loud baby’s wail, and a patter of tiny feet followed by Elgara’s head around the door, an expression of uncertainty on her face.  
“Mamae? Revas has gone poopy _all over…”_  
Slowly, beatifically, Merrill smiled. Roger, stricken, hung his head.  
“...I’ll go and deal with that then, shall I?”  
“Perhaps you should,” Merrill agreed, still smiling. “Take Anders’ clothes to the fire pit outside once you are done?”  
With the face of a soldier being sent to his death, Roger saluted her gravely and followed his daughter out of the door; Merrill muffled a laugh when she heard his distant ‘Oh, _Maker.’_ Shaking her head, she turned back to the task at hand, who was currently fitfully asleep, eyelids and fingers twitching, breathing rough and broken by coughs. Under his clothes he was painfully thin, bruised and scarred; it was a simple matter to heat a bowl of water and begin to carefully mop away some of the grime that had collected on his skin, but she could have cried to see that he barely looked better when clean. Instead of doing that, as her younger self might have, she bit her lip and continued to wash him, wondering as she did so what had been going through his mind as he struggled up the road where she’d eventually found him. Had he been looking for them? Looking for Roger, from the sound of it. A small worm of jealousy sprang to uncomfortable life in her chest, and she stopped, fingers fiercely wringing dirty water out of the cloth into the bowl as she studied Anders’ face intently.  
“You’re not going to steal my husband from me,” she told him, as though he was in any state to understand. “I hope you know that. It’s very important that you know that.”  
Anders coughed again, eyelids peeling back to reveal nothing but bloodshot whites and tiny specks of red appearing on his pale lips. Suddenly it seemed ridiculous to suspect him of any kind of romantic subterfuge- he was hardly going to seduce _anyone_ like this. She hurried to soothe him, mentally running through her small stock of healing herbs; they’d been lucky thus far, even the children were robust and rarely ill, and did she even have enough elfroot to last them the winter? She’d have to go out and find more, hope the snow hadn’t been deep enough to kill off even that robust plant, and… there had been royal elfroot somewhere, where had that been? She’d made a map but where had she put it…  
A sound made her frantically running mind pause. She half-turned her head, twitching an ear towards the door to the other room as she recognised the noise.  
Roger was singing, and she relaxed immediately.   
It wasn’t as though he was a _good_ singer- the tune was usually more of a suggestion than a rule, and you could forget such highbrow things as key, or the correct notes in the correct order- but he always seemed to be opening more of himself to the world in song. His Fereldan accent, made muted during his time in Kirkwall, always came through strongest when he sang, and she knew from memory that his expression would be unguarded and gentle, faraway and content. If Roger was singing, there could be nothing wrong.  
Well, except the obvious. She looked back at Anders and heaved a sigh. She _would_ have to get more elfroot. Healing magic was not exactly her speciality; perhaps, she thought hopefully, if she got Anders back to some semblance of lucidity he’d be able to tell her how to help him _properly._ He’d been an excellent healer, when he hadn’t been busy being a revolutionary.  
First things first, however. There’d be no getting anyone better if Anders remained as filthy as he currently was. Briefly kindling a flame to reheat the water, she leaned forward and gently stroked the hair back from his forehead; he shifted, turning his head into the contact, and some of his twitching eased.  
“We’ll make you better,” she assured him, carefully smoothing the cloth over his clammy, too-warm skin. “You’ll see. And we’ve needed a cat to keep down the mice in the barn for a while. We’ll get you a kitten when you’re back on your feet. I promise.”


	5. Chapter Five

Two days later, when the sun shone high and bright but the wind cut like a knife and the snow crunched underfoot like gravel, Roger was shovelling goat shit out of the barn and taking the opportunity to _not_ think about Anders. The goats, displeased at being kept inside, milled around his legs and got in the way, bleating mournfully; the herd leader, known as Emma, watched him with a disapproving expression.  
“What are you looking at?” he asked her, leaning on his shovel and meeting her huge slotted eyes. “You know perfectly well there’s no grass out there right now. And you’ve got _more_ than enough hay.”  
As though to indicate that his point, however true, had no bearing on her displeasure, Emma turned her head slightly and twitched a mouthful out of the hayrack, not breaking eye contact. Roger pursed his lips, then decided to take the mature route and stuck his tongue out.  
“You’re not the boss of me!”  
“Talking to animals again, Sideburns?”  
Roger straightened at the sound of a familiar voice, and his face broke into a wide smile at the sight of a short, stocky figure leaning against the barn doorpost.  
“Varric! And you brought your chest hair!”  
“It was lonesome for you,” Varric deadpanned, straightening up and stepping inside properly to meet Roger’s enthusiastic hug (which no longer involved lifting the dwarf off his feet, after Varric had used it as an opportunity to plant his boot somewhere painful). “Missed its one true love, your facial decoration.”  
“No wonder, it’s been far too long since we’ve seen each other. Where have you _been?”_  
“Around,” said Varric with consummate evasion. “Drinking, gambling, gambling over drinking, you know how it is. You been keeping up with outside events?”  
“A bit. Heard about the conclave. Heard about how it ended. Heard a few whispers about something called ‘the Inquisition’ but not much more than that. Merrill brought back the gossip last time she went out to Markham. Along with something else unexpected.”  
Varric rocked back on his heels, raising an eyebrow. “Ah, yes. The lamb brought back to the fold. Met Daisy and the kids out looking for elfroot on the way up, she told me about your guest.”  
“If there’s one thing Anders _isn’t_ it’s a lamb.” Roger picked up the shovel again and prodded with decided bad temper at a pile of soiled straw. “His fever broke last night and he’s spent the whole time since then being _moody_. I didn’t know someone could go from raving to sulking so fast.”  
“What were you expecting, Sideburns? It’s Blondie. The man’s elevated sulking to an art form.”  
“He won’t even look at me. Or Merrill. Getting him to eat anything’s a battle because he still can’t hold a spoon but he won’t let us feed him any more. Stubborn idiot man. I still don’t know what he was trying to achieve wandering around in the snow in the first place!”  
The shovel clattered and bounced as it was flung to the floor; Varric stepped smartly sideways to avoid it, and cleared his throat. Roger pouted at the opposite wall for a moment, then sighed and dragged a hand down his face.  
“Sorry, Varric. What were you saying about news?”  
Pushing aside a curious goat nose, Varric stepped over to lean against the wall next to his friend, and it was presumably entirely by coincidence that this put him in position to lean his shoulder slightly against Roger’s middle. And an equal coincidence that Roger leaned back.  
“Well, for starters this ‘Inquisition’ thing’s turned out to be pretty important,” Varric began, crossing his arms and drumming his fingers on his elbow. “Pretty much the most important thing, actually. Know anything about the Herald of Andraste?”  
“Name’s been tossed around. Something about the Fade and demons springing out of tears in reality over Ferelden- why is it always Ferelden?- and being rescued by Andraste after the Conclave thing. It’s all a bit confused, especially since some of the people telling the stories have been drinking enough to try claiming the man’s Qunari.”  
Varric barked a laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah, folks always get hung up on that one. He’s not Qunari.”  
“Well, obviously. That’s a ridiculous notion.”  
“He’s Tal-Vashoth. You know, the ones we beat up before we moved up in the world and beat up the Arishok? A nice guy, actually, for someone who could probably step on me without even noticing.”  
Roger slowly swivelled and squinted down at Varric, levelling a finger at him.  
“You’re serious.”  
“Deadly.”  
“He’s Qunari?”  
“Horns and everything.”  
Roger paused to absorb this, then began to snicker, building up to a full-throated laugh.  
“What does he think of being the Herald of _Andraste?”_ he spluttered, once he could manage words again. Varric smirked.  
“If I knew I’d know more than he does. But I’m not here to gossip with you about Arvar Adaar, even if there’s quite a bit of it I could share given the right persuasion. I’m here because-”  
He stopped, sobering abruptly, and briefly shut his eyes. Roger, pulled from his own amusement by the sudden change of mood, frowned and reached out to tweak Varric’s topknot in a way he knew would be objected to; when the dwarf did nothing but grumble briefly and half-heartedly wave a hand at him, his frown deepened.  
“Varric. What’’s up?”  
“It’s Corypheus, Hawke. We didn’t kill him. He’s back.”  
There was a pause. It was a very sharp, cold pause.  
“We killed him,” Roger stated after a while. “We have to have killed him, Varric.”  
“Roger, I’m sorry-”  
“We can’t have just _let him free,”_ Roger insisted, not looking at him. “We can’t have just _undone_ everything my father suffered to keep him imprisoned. _We killed him.”_  
“Roger-”  
“Varric!”  
“I know how you’re feeling right now, but-”  
“You’re telling me we doomed everyone!”  
Varric sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Shut up and listen, Sideburns. He’s back, and whining about it isn’t going to change anything.”  
Roger made a strange noise halfway between a moan and a growl and flung his arms in the air. “Well fine! I guess I’ll just go and kill him again!”  
“See, I knew you’d say that,” Varric said, grabbing Roger’s arm as he moved to stride out of the barn. “And I knew it’d be a damn stupid idea, too. So I’m not going to let you do that.”  
“Cute, Varric, but if this is my fault then I’m going to fix it.”  
“Listen, if you throw away all the time and energy I spent spinning the fanciest tales of my authorial existence to Cassandra about not knowing where you were, I’m going to be annoyed. _Shut up_ , and _listen.”_  
With a soft wheezing sound Roger subsided against the wall again and rubbed an eye. “...Fine. What have you got in mind?”  
“Go fetch Daisy and I’ll tell you both.”


	6. Chapter Six

Later, Merrill fetched and the children down for naps, the three of them were sitting around the table (constructed by Roger, and not coincidentally sporting four mismatched legs and a pronounced wobble) and staring into mugs of tea.  
“Corypheus,” Merrill said, again. “We definitely didn’t kill him.”  
“Like I said, Daisy, the last four times, seems like he got out somehow and blew up the Conclave.”  
“But we’re not allowed to go and kill him properly.”  
“No, Roger, that’s a _bad_ idea. Not that most of your ideas don’t have a trace of the terrible about them, but that one’s even worse than usual.”  
“How are we supposed to help the Inquisition, then?” Merrill asked, fidgeting nervously with her mug. “Arvar- the Inquisitor- the Herald- what do I call him?”  
“Whatever you like, Daisy. Myself, I’ve gone with Tiny.”  
“But if he’s a Qunari, he must be- oh. I get it. Anyway, this Arvar- he sounds like he needs lots of help. And Roger’s right, it is our fault that he has to deal with Corypheus in the first place. But- we can’t both go, someone needs to look after the children- and if we don’t… come back…”  
Varric reached across the table and put his hand over hers, stilling its nervous movement. “This is exactly why I said you two running off’s a bad idea, Daisy. You’ve got lives, you’ve got kids. Don’t throw that away.”  
“We have to _help_ ,” Roger said, dragging his hands down his face. “I don’t want to waltz off and get my fine behind spanked by Templars yet again, especially not if they’ve all decided that Meredith was the perfect role model, but I can’t just _sit here-_ ”  
“I’m not asking you to just sit here. I said I had an idea, didn’t I? It’s going to need a _hell_ of a lot of planning, but… we pull this off, nobody’s ever going to dig into your lives again. And you guys get to _stay_ alive.”  
“Staying alive’s something I’ve got quite attached to recently,” Roger agreed, knocking back half his tea in one gulp. “So stop talking and start _talking_ , Varric.”  
Varric snorted and took a drink of his own, but before he could continue the sound of the bedroom door scraping slowly open interrupted, and a bedraggled figure wearing only drawers and a tunic draped over his shoulders shuffled in. The glare on his face seemed to be taking up most of his energy, judging from the way he was clinging to the doorframe.  
“Blondie!” Varric exclaimed, turning to face him and spreading his arms with a welcoming grin. “What an unexpected pleasure!”  
“Varric,” Anders rasped, without any obvious cessation of the glare. “I thought I heard your voice.”  
“Anders! Go back to bed this minute!” Merrill exclaimed, in a tone not dissimilar to that used on Elgara. Anders blinked, swayed slightly as though he was genuinely considering it for a moment, then tightened his grip on his support.  
“If there’s something going on, I want to know about it,” he said, pushing his lower lip out mulishly. Roger exchanged glances with Merrill across the table; suddenly the use of her Mother Voice seemed far more appropriate.  
“You can listen in if you eat something,” Roger said, eventually. “And if you sit down before you fall over.”  
Anders growled faintly under his breath, but nodded, taking a shaky step away from the safety of the door; Roger, having known full well what was about to happen, was there to catch him before he hit the floor.  
“All right, you made a good effort, close enough. C’mon there, let me-”  
With an undignified yelp Anders was swept up into Roger’s arms and carried, with all the flourish of a bride on her wedding day, over to be sat on his vacated chair. Varric was muffling laughter behind his hand without much success; Merrill, on her way back from the cooking fire with a bowl of broth in hand, had gone bright red with the effort not to giggle. Anders glowered, although there was a distinct air of defeat about the expression; Roger perched on the table next to him, exuding smugness.  
“There. Much better. Catch him up while he eats, Varric, and then for the love of Andraste and all her happy betrayers tell us what’s bubbling away in that woefully underbearded head of yours before I decide it’s not worth taking your advice any more.”  
Varric toasted him with his tea mug, getting his amusement under control, and ran through the story once again with only a couple of extra rhetorical flourishes. Afterwards, Anders was silent, staring into his half-empty bowl; when he looked up at Roger his face was nearly blank.  
“You need to fix this,” he said, tone soft but underlaid with the burning intensity Roger recognised from the last months in Kirkwall. “You need to make up for what you’ve done.”  
“That’s what Varric’s here for,” Roger said, pretending that the bitter blame in Anders’ eyes wasn’t burning a guilty hole right through his heart. “You know us, Anders! Put the gang’s heads together and in no time the Wardens are saved, Corypheus is dead for good, the Orlesian Civil War’s over, Tevinter’s allied with the Qun, and we’ve put a male Qunari on the Sunburst Throne with the ghost of Divine Justinia’s blessing-”  
“Shut up!”  
In the face of an Anders positively vibrating with rage, Roger did. Varric opened his mouth, and was promptly overridden.  
“This is your fault! You should have left well enough alone, and because you just _had_ to meddle like you _always_ meddle the world is doomed- the Wardens are doomed- I haven’t heard you mention Carver once! Did you _forget_ that your brother is _one of the Wardens?_ I can’t believe you, I can’t believe this, I can’t believe you’d be stupid enough to poke into Warden business and let _something like this free-”_  
“Woah there, Blondie,” Varric interjected. Roger raised a hand, slowly and carefully sliding off the table to stand up properly.  
“Anders, look-”  
“No, you look,” Anders hissed, and Roger winced at the sight of an all-too-familiar blue glow rising in the man’s eyes. Varric, behind him, caught the expression and also got to his feet, tense and waiting.  
“No need for Justice to come out to play, Anders. We’ll fix it, I promise,” Roger said, as evenly as he could manage. “Carver’ll be fine, and _you’ll_ be fine-”  
With a snarl Anders shot upright, the blue glow spreading in rapid crackles over his skin; he raised a hand, magic thrumming, and-  
-was knocked clear across the room by a fist of rock, slamming into the opposite wall with painful force. Merrill stood by the door, wisps of power darting and snapping around the head of her staff, face locked in a rictus of fury.  
 _“Not here, Justice,”_ she growled, stalking across the room and planting herself between Anders and the other two men. “Don’t you _fucking dare.”_  
The glow was fading as fast as it had appeared, and Anders looked up in dazed, miserable confusion as the last of it drained away to nothing.  
“Merrill…?”  
She dropped her staff, falling to her knees next to him, and rested a small hand on his chest.  
“I’m sorry! But I couldn’t let Justice hurt Roger or the children,” she told him, matter-of-fact, as she began to gently check him over for new damage. “Or Varric. I won’t have that in my house. I hope you understand!”  
Shutting his eyes, Anders managed a stiff nod, and she smiled in return.  
“Now, let’s get you back to bed. We’ll tell you what we decide after you’ve had a sleep, I promise.”  
Without complaint he let her heave him back to his feet and support him back into the bedroom. Varric looked after them, leaning on the table and letting out a low whistle of frank admiration.  
“Our Daisy’s really something else,” he said, and Roger nodded fervent agreement just as both his children, disturbed by the commotion, began to cry.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things to keep in mind: I've not, at this point, played Origins or the Awakening dlc, so while I know that Justice is actually a character in his own right I've not met him.

When Anders woke up, it was dark, and everything hurt.  
Moving seemed like a terrible idea, as did existing in general. Justice’s disapproval was an aching, stonelike ball in his mind, impossible to escape, weighing down his thoughts. From the other side of the door came the sound of a whimpering child, and someone murmuring to them, too low to make out the words; his heart contracted in his chest, a painful lump of longing.  
 _Your place is not with them,_ said Justice.  
He did not immediately reply. He knew. He _knew_. But he still strained his ears to hear the whimpers dissolve into quiet baby giggles, and _wanted.  
This is not for you_, Justice snapped, a flare of irritation making the body he wore prickle and burn. _You cannot fulfil your purpose this way.  
My purpose or your purpose?_ Anders thought, before he could stop himself, then hissed and arched as Justice’s anger set already oversensitive nerves on fire.  
 _You have already wasted years when you should have been capitalising on what we have achieved. There is so much more still to do. This Inquisition can be turned to our cause.  
You’re right. I know. This is an opportunity we can’t afford to miss. But- these are my friends-  
I know you have enjoyed seeing them,_ Justice admitted. _But they have made a life for themselves here, and it is your responsibility to ensure they can live it as they should. The children- they are bound to be mages, are they not? Do you want them to grow up in this world, where they are in constant danger?  
No,_ said Anders, remembering Roger’s amber eyes looking up at him from a tiny face, curious and innocent. It was terrifyingly easy to imagine her broken and bloody, a faceless templar grinding her fragile body into the dirt beneath their heel. _Oh no. No.  
You give up what they have to keep them safe. Remember that.  
I remember. When I recover, we’ll go back to Ferelden. The Kirkwall mages may have rejected us, but there’ll be plenty of others who will listen still.  
Good. I was worried for you, Anders. I thought perhaps Kirkwall had damaged you more than I knew._  
Anders closed his eyes briefly, against the flood of memories. Seven years of work, leading up to one moment- and after that? He hadn’t intended to be alive after that, but Roger had _demanded_ it of him, with the force he used only with things that really mattered. And if Roger had decided that forcing him to live mattered, well. It was only right to spend that life ensuring that the things Roger loved best were kept safe.  
 _No. I just needed some time. And some perspective._  
If Justice’s displeasure was an aching knot then his approval was a warm bath, muscles relaxing, pain ebbing away. His presence subsided, and Anders let out a long breath. It was good to have a purpose again. Good to _understand_ again.  
“You’re awake!”  
The pain flared back into life as he flinched from the unexpected voice. Merrill pulled an apologetic face as she approached the bed.  
“I hope I didn’t hurt you too badly earlier,” she said, beginning to fuss with the blankets. “Nothing personal, you know? Justice just gets a bit carried away sometimes.”  
“...I’ll live,” Anders managed, swallowing the surprise he always felt when Merrill spoke to him as though he was one of her friends. Her real friends. “Nothing _too_ badly broken.”  
“You must teach me some of your healing spells,” she told him earnestly, reaching round his head to fluff his pillow; brought into close proximity, it was hard for Anders _not_ to notice that motherhood had gone a long way to filling out certain of her assets. Horrified at himself, he shut his eyes until the unexpected softness went away. “It’ll be much easier on everyone if I could just get your body properly started back to recovery, you know?”  
“I- I’m feeling much better already,” Anders choked out. “I’d rather you didn’t do anything to my body.”  
“Oh, that’s all right,” Merrill said, with a kind of cheerful inevitability to her tone that worried Anders more than anything else just that second. “I know you’d rather Roger do it.”  
There was silence. Humming slightly, Merrill poured a dose of elfroot from a flask and stirred it.  
“Can you sit up?”  
Without a word he dragged himself as upright as he could manage, eyeing the cup. It probably wasn’t poisoned. His hands shook as he accepted it, but he managed to get it to his lips.  
It tasted like elfroot.  
The silence dragged. Merrill watched him as he took his medicine, her face set in a placid little smile. He fidgeted with the cup, knowing he should say something but not knowing where to start.  
In the end, he settled for, “I’m not here to take him away from you.”  
“I know,” she assured him, immediately. “I wouldn’t let you, anyway.”  
“Why even bring it up, then?” he said, more snappish than intended. “It was a foolish dream, even back in Kirkwall- I’m not _blind_ , I could see how his eyes followed you everywhere you went-”  
“He likes you too, you know,” Merrill interrupted, and Anders suddenly found it very difficult not to gape like an idiot.  
“What?”  
“He flirted with you, he told me. He doesn’t flirt with everyone, you know. Only people he _really_ likes.”  
“What- what difference does it make? He chose you, in the end. Stop giving me false hope!”  
“It _means_ that you need to stop hurting him so much!” she hissed, leaning forward. “He cares about you and he wants you to be safe! Let him- let _us_ keep you safe, Anders, please. It hurts, otherwise.”  
“Don’t pretend you care about me too,” Anders returned, though his heart had somehow become a stone lodged in his throat. “Roger, perhaps, but not _you.”_  
“I’ve always cared about you, Anders,” she told him, pulling back and getting to her feet with tight, stiff little motions. “Now I’m wondering if it’s ever got me anywhere!”  
“I’m not the sort of person you should be caring about. I’m not the sort of person Roger should be caring about. Don’t waste your effort- you’re right, it doesn’t get you a Maker-damned thing!”  
Merrill reached forward and plucked the elfroot cup out of his grasp, then turned on her heel, heading towards the door. Just as she reached it, she stopped.  
“You’re going to get better,” she said, and it had the ring of an oath sworn at the holiest altar. “Even if you won’t teach me your healing spells!”  
The door was not slammed behind her, but it might as well have been. Anders stared at it, lost, the regained certainty taken right out of his hands.  
 _You did well to remind her of your role in this,_ said Justice.  
 _She won’t leave it be,_ Anders said. _If I know anything about Merrill, it’s that she won’t let it go.  
Stand firm, my friend. You know this is the right thing to do.  
I know. I will._  
As Justice returned to silence, Anders settled down against his newly fluffed pillow and looked at the ceiling.  
It was going to be a long time till morning.  
And he _still_ didn’t know what the plan was.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited a single sentence at the beginning of this after a friend pointed out a blatant plothole that I missed like a moron. Don't worry too much about it. If I actually ever finish this I will probably repost it with a better title, better formatting and more editing anyway...

Roger told him the plan the next morning, with inappropriate enthusiasm.  
“-Varric says he’s already got someone in mind, too. He used to be in the Kirkwall Circle, escaped when everything went down and has apparently been pretending to be a perfectly non-magical actor since then. Varric said he dropped a couple of hints, nothing big, and the guy practically started frothing at the mouth, so he’s pretty confident we’ve got our man. All we need to do now is settle on a story and start sending a few letters.”  
He gave Anders a brilliant grin. Anders looked at him. The grin did not fade.  
“Let me get this straight. You’re going to hire someone to… pretend to be you, and send him to the Inquisition with all your information, and to do any and all necessary fighting?”  
“Yup, that about sums it up.”  
“I’m… impressed, I think.” Anders scratched his cheek, thinking it over. “There’s a few potentially bad issues, but there always are.”  
“So long as we warn everyone to treat him as though he’s me-”  
“I don’t think we can find _anyone_ to effectively mimic your particular sense of humour. Or direction.”  
Roger’s grin widened exponentially.  
“We’ll just tell him he ought to run in the wrong direction at least twice every time they go anywhere,” he said. “And respond to everything with the exact opposite of what he means. Nobody will suspect a thing that way!”  
“Everyone will be too _confused_ to suspect anything,” Anders observed dryly.  
“Exactly!”  
Roger’s laugh was frustratingly infectious; Anders could feel an answering smile tugging at his mouth. He shook his head instead, in an effort to hide it; Roger was not fooled, and reached over to poke a gentle teasing finger at Anders’ temple.  
“I wanted to ask you what you wanted the fake me to say about _you_ ,” he said. “Because people are going to ask, and he probably shouldn’t answer ‘I’ve got him tucked up in my bed where I feed him soup and read him stories’.”  
“You’ve never read me a story,” said Anders, before he realised how absurd that sounded. Roger snorted.  
“Oh, I’m sorry. Tucked up in my bed where I feed him soup and listen to him complain?”  
“You complain more than I do. I _know_ it’s your bed but it’s your choice to keep me here-”  
“Just answer the question already, before I decide that the right answer is to tell everyone you’ve set up some kind of sexual dungeon to cater to people with a prurient interest in demons.”  
There was a long, slow pause while Anders tried to wrap his brain around that image, both because it was the most bizarre thing he’d heard in a long time and because it was easier than thinking about the actual question.  
“...I don’t think Justice would be what people like that were interested in,” he said, eventually. Roger, who had been similarly quiet for possibly similar reasons, made an assenting noise.  
“Now you say that, I agree. But have you got an answer for me or not?”  
Anders picked at a loose thread in the edge of the blanket, shaking his head in abrupt frustration.  
“What do you _want_ me to answer? If you want to deflect attention from yourself, the best way is to deny you know me- or ever knew me. If there was ever a me to _know._ Just tell everyone I was an Abomination all along, they’ll believe it.”  
“...I can imply you’re dead, absolutely,” Roger said, tone suspiciously blank. Anders shook his head; he’d tangled the thread of blanket around his fingers so tightly the tips of them were white.  
“Not just that. Imply you’re _glad_ I’m dead. Imply I was dead from the start.”  
“I’m not going to-”  
“You need to. It’s dangerous to know me. It’s dangerous to be _sympathetic_ to me. Especially in that kind of company.”  
“Varric says the Inquisitor is a mage himself,” Roger said, face settling into a familiar obstinate cast. “A mage who’s allied with the mages under Grand Enchanter Fiona, to boot.”  
“Do I have to remind you that the mages rejected me as surely as everyone else did? They believe they don’t need me- that I’m dangerous. You won’t find any softer attitudes there. _Please,_ Roger- don’t try and redeem me. It won’t work.”  
The silence this time was painful. Anders’ fingers were starting to throb, but he kept the thread as a tight-wound noose, a reminder.  
“All right,” Roger said, eventually. Anders relaxed, at the same time as his heart squeezed and dropped, and then twisted and leapt as Roger reached forward and tugged the thread loose, calloused fingers rubbing blood back into the digits with peculiar gentleness. “Redeeming you in the eyes of the entirety of Thedas probably is a bit ambitious, even for me. But don’t think for a nuglicking, demon-fucking second that I’m giving up on you entirely, you _useless bastard.”_  
Anders choked on a half-laugh, catching Roger’s hand before he could stop himself, trying to ignore the burn at the corners of his eyes. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”  
“That’s what the imposter me is for!” Roger returned; his voice was a little rough, and he squeezed Anders’ hand as though he was trying to anchor them both. “Don’t worry about little old me. You know I can look after myself. And when I can’t, I’ve got Merrill.”  
“She loves you,” said Anders, a treacherous drop of moisture sliding its way free. “I was wrong, in the sewers.”  
“I always knew that,” Roger said, slowly dropping his head until his forehead bumped their joined hands. “I was just waiting for you to know that.”  
For a few minutes they both sat, the atmosphere heavy with unspoken things, and then Roger sighed and straightened up, disengaging his fingers.  
“Better let Varric know that the demon brothel idea is a no-go. He’ll be _so_ disappointed.”  
“Hawke, I swear by Maferath’s favourite of Andraste’s lacy underthings that if I hear anyone say my name and the phrase ‘demon brothel’ in the same sentence in the future you will be dead by the next sunrise.”  
“Now, Anders, don’t take it so hard just because Justice isn’t desirable enough.”  
Anders made some effort to reach for him and deliver a well-deserved smack, but Roger slipped out of range and winked at him before disappearing through the door.  
_That man is impossible,_ thought Anders, and immediately wished the words had not been tinged with so much affection as Justice grumbled from the back of his mind.  
_That man is dangerous._  
I know. He won’t get in the way, I promise.  
Keep your promises, Justice told him, unamused, and settled down once more.


End file.
